Sole survivor
by tobia
Summary: In the end, she took them with her. Postwar fanfic. J/C, R/T, Marco/Jake friendship  nonslash . Spoilers for 54.


**Sole Survivor**

**Author's note: I don't own the Animorphs.**

In the end, she took them with her. On the first day, the last day, in DC, she had realized it was ending, that after this day, nothing between the six—no, the _five_—of them would ever be the same.

In the years before the war ended, she had already begun to see the changes in Jake, the changes she had known she would, as the man she loved had gradually grown older and grown inward. So, that night, when she had hugged him, she had taken a part of him as well. She couldn't bear to leave him completely behind. In the movies, they always ended up together, because people like happy endings, no matter how fake, and so the tabloids always whisper about secret rendezvous and hidden loves, about an osprey spotted with a peregrine. Of course, the movies never show the end of it all, either, and she never tells them. After all, she, too, would like to believe the lie she sees, glistening and perfect, on the silver screen.

Tobias she had taken in those moments after Rachel's death, as soon as he had returned from his human form, a form he would never use again. She knows he had never quite felt comfortable in his human skin, that he had never really belonged. So she thinks, although she cannot say with absolute certainty, that the accident three years ago had not really been an accident at all. She knows that the lie he told was one to save Rachel's heart and little else. Some people are simply not meant to be who they are.

Rachel she had had for the longest time; _fitting_, she sometimes thought. Much like her socks, the two had never matched. They weren't that kind of friendship, the kind where you share clothes and like the same bands and know the next word that will come out of the other person's mouth. No, their friendship had been more like jagged-edged pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, opposites that filled in each other gaps. At least, that's how it had been _before_, when Rachel was a brave, confident fashionista and Cassie was a quiet, mellow farm girl. But with time, Rachel's edges had grown more jagged until they did not fit with Cassie's at all—until they did not fit with anyone's, really, because sometimes, that is what you need to win a war. But still, she mourns that girl who was before, who had once fit so closely into her soul. They had needed her bravery—even her insanity—to win the war, yes, but Cassie cannot forget that harrowing, bizarre day with Rachel and Crayak that had proved, in the end, there were some things even Xena, Warrior Princess, wouldn't do. In the end, she remembers her friend's humanity, the thing everyone seems to forget.

Ax she had taken in the moments before he left for the Dome Ship _Elfangor_ as he held each of their hands and said good-bye, an unexpected act of intimacy that had shocked them all. She wonders if he noticed as the eerie calm, if he had known what she was doing, the rules she was breaking—his species', her own. But, if he knew, he said nothing, did nothing, told no one. Ax could defy orders—he had many times—but he always defied them with deference to another; disobedience to one authority had always meant loyalty to another. She wonders what he was deferring to in that moment when he broke the rules of both his people and hers, if maybe it had something to do with the ship's name, a name that to the both of them would always mean great power, great defiance—and great loss. Cassie had been no stranger to death that night in the construction site, having witnessed the deaths of many a clinic patient, but yet the Andalite's death remained in her mind as the moment she realized that not everything—_everyone_—great lives forever. Elfangor was her _momento mor_i—was he Ax's as well?

Marco she had taken last, in that hotel by the Hague. He had been last for a reason—namely, that she had never thought he would be gone. Marco was a survivor, in every sense of the word. He saw the world as a comedy and so he laughed. He laughed and he lived. Not without sorrow, not without loss—he was a no fool—but he lived, nonetheless. In the end, it was his compassion that did him in. Marco had had his share of girlfriends, who Cassie had seen in supermarket tabloids, hanging off his design shirt dressed arm, but he had not had great love. He did, however, have a best friend, a boy who both saved his life and who sacrificed it. Marco was ruthless, but he was loyal, too.

Some days, she slips away. They let her do it, with little question. She is after all, the last Animorph, a living legend. She is also the sole survivor and so she does what she has to: she remembers. She concretes, and she feels herself change, sometimes a lot, sometimes just a little, and waits until she can feel the tugs of recklessness, or courage, or optimism, or ruthlessness, or wild instinct bubbling up beside her mind.

She sits there holding onto the last vestiges of her friends and wonders how on Earth she could fool everyone into thinking she's moved on.


End file.
